Each Open Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software. This means fewer jobs, less software revenue, and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate (p. 2)

Yet another case of people only looking at one side of the story. Yes, it may cost a few jobs in the software-producing industry, but imagine how much money open-source software saves organizations, and thus allows them to expand employment. If we were forced to buy bottled air in order to breathe, that would create plenty of jobs in the air-bottling industry, but no one would argue that society as a whole would be better off. When you take something that's free and slap a price tag on it, society loses.

IF Linux contains proprietary code from UNIX, and other intellectual property has been incorporated into open-source software, I think SCO has a valid complaint, but you can't sue to stop people from giving things away! Open-source is a reaction of a free marketplace to Microsoft's hegemony, real or perceived, and is pushing Microsoft to innovate. Competition is a good thing.

I have no special feelings one way or another concerning Open Source. But what is important is business is standardization. You want to make sure that an excel or word document that you send to a supplier or client can be opened by him. When your auditors come to see you once a year, they need to be able to set themselves up in an office and be able to plug into your network. A game developed for a certain kind of operating system should be able to have the widest audience possible without having to re-write the code for 20 different environments. That is the advantage of having standard platforms and software.

Each Open Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software. This means fewer jobs, less software revenue, and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate

But there is a problem when the standard platforms and software are owned by a private company. And that's the problem with Microsoft, which owned Windows.

I don't see the point of this (and I hear it a lot). Surely you are not saying that Windows might be better-accepted if it was state-owned. If MS was state owned, you would soon see laws banning other companies (bye-bye Linux).

I don't know if Canada ever had state-owned telephone monopolies, like we had in Europe. Here in Switzerland, in 1990, a one hour phone call to the U.S. would cost about 100 Francs to Swisscom - the state monopoly. Now that the same call will cost only 6 Francs, since competitors were allowed in a few years ago. And that is before inflation is taken into account.

State-owned monopolies do not "protect the consumer from vicious private companies". They are simply another way of raising state revenue.

I think Windows is an amazing product. It has more functioning parts than an aircraft carrier, and costs a hell of a lot less to maintain. I can't really think of anything that I want it to do that it does not allow me to do on a PC, if properly configured. And nobody is preventing anyone else from developing a competing product - witness Linux. IBM tried hard with OS/2, but it sucked, and rightfully bombed. Of course, any competitor will have to play catch-up, as Windows XP is the result of some 15 years of evolving experience with Windows.

That said, if somebody wants to make a better operating system, I'm all for it, and I'll buy it if it is truely better.

Surely you are not saying that Windows might be better-accepted if it was state-owned.

You read wayyyyyyy much more into what I wrote than what I meant.

I believe major IT technologies should be developed according to open, public, agreed to standards. TCP/IP protocol, that is used to carry the bits and bytes that form this content on your screen, is a good example. MS doesn't own that standard, but can use it. And the same can be said for any IT company in the world. The openness of that technology levels the playing field and that's when us, as consumers, benefit from competition.

And as for state-owned monopolies versus open market, for each successful market opening (such as the one you refer to, although we don't have all the facts), there is an equally bad experiment, such as what happened in Ontario when the conservative government decided to open the distribution of electricity to multiple companies. So, let's not get into that...

It sounds like he is not only railing against Linux's presumed copyright infringement against Unix, but anybody anywhere deciding to give away his intellectual property under GPL if he or she so chooses. Wow!!! So the government will tell you how and why and when you can not charge for software.
This is cracked, but no doubt the idiots in congress, since the letter touches on National Security - love the wily North Korean hacker - and the outflow of tech jobs to Bangalore (like SCO wouldn't or hasn't already done that) will pass something utterly ill-advised.

I want whatever the letter writer was smoking.

I may be ugly. I may be an American. But don't call me an ugly American.

The advantages of open source software (like Linux and FreeBSD) over closed source software (like SCO UnixWare and Windows) really come out when there is when a vunerability is found in the software. When the software is open source, the source code is out there for anyone to look over and find problems with. More importantly, anyone can fix the bug and release the fix (generally by submitting the fix back to the maintainers of the project). If you really don't want to wait, you can fix and recompile it yourself. However, with closed source software, you have to wait until the publisher gets around to making a change and releasing the patch.

And now, the less serious parts of my post.

Cfalk wrote:
That said, if somebody wants to make a better operating system, I'm all for it, and I'll buy it if it is truely better.